Rodney Saulsberry's Tongue Twisters and Vocal Warm-Ups: With Other Vocal Care Tips

By Rodney Saulsberry

Do you use your voice for work? Do you want to become a better voiceover actor, singer, or public speaker? This book, written by well-known and respected voice talent Rodney Saulsberry, contains fun and challenging tongue twisters and vocal warm-ups that prepare you to read commercial, promo, narration, trailer, and animation copy with the proper energy and vocal dexterity. Learn how to deal with mouth clicks and sibilance issues, breathe correctly, control plosive words, and master microphone technique. Plus, get great tips on everyday vocal care from other professionals as well as tips on how to succeed in the voiceover industry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483569703

Rodney Saulsberry

Rodney Saulsberry is one of the premier voice-over talents and vocal coaches in the country. He is also a published author with three bestselling books, You Can Bank on Your Voice, Step Up to the Mic and Rodney Saulsberry's Tongue Twisters and Vocal Warm-Ups.  Saulsberry’s distinctive announcer voice is literally everywhere. He has announced promos for Dancing With The Stars on ABC. He live announced the 34th NAACP Image Awards on FOX and voiced promos for the Grammys and Country Music Awards on CBS. Currently his voice can be heard promoting Penn and Teller Fool Us and Masters of Illusion on the CW Network and International promos for Telemundo. Rodney's acting credits include guest star appearances on Monk, Without a Trace, Law & Order: LA and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. He reoccurs as Anthony Walker a street musician and former homeless man on the Daytime Drama The Bold and the Beautiful.

Book preview

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Introduction

WHEN I TRAVEL AROUND THE COUNTRY HOSTING workshops and other voiceover events, people don’t greet me with an extended hand followed by a hello. They extend their hand, and with a big smile from ear to ear, they recite one of my many tongue twisters. The most popular being Why in the world would a whale want water? When a whale wants water will a well run dry? I am flattered by the recognition of my work from voiceover actors all over the world and it has inspired me to write this, my third book.

Every profession that requires physicality requires proper exercise, warm-up, and preparation for the task at hand—and tongue twisters are the perfect warm-up for your voice. Every time you do one of the tongue twisters in this book, you will have just performed a complex dance with many body parts, including your lips, tongue, jaw, and larynx that will quickly get you ready to read copy.

As any of my students will attest, I believe that voiceover is analogous to music and that when you read a piece of copy you are singing a song. The difference in the way you sing that song compared to another performer is in its interpretation. In voiceover, the punctuation and the VO direction are the music notes. To do well as a voice artist, you must find the music in all scripts and tongue twisters.

People don’t speak in one cadence. Our everyday speech is rhythmic. It’s like singing notes. We vary our rhythms based on intent. If we want to drive a point home, we may speed up our tempo. If we want to stretch out a point, we may slow down our tempo. When you start that musical journey with a rhythmic tongue twister, your journey to success begins.

This book is designed to help anyone who uses his or her voice for business. It will help voiceover professionals perfect reading exactly what is on the page with the flair and dexterity that is needed to read fast tags, medical copy, animation, promos, narration, video games, audiobooks, trailers, and commercial copy.

Toastmasters International members will find this book to be helpful in preparing them for speaking events that could lead to a Golden Gavel Award or a World Championship! Teachers of speech and diction will find this book useful in the classroom, and public speakers will keep it right next to their prepared text as a warm-up vehicle before every speech! If you are about to use your voice to communicate to others on any professional level, this is the book for you.

And, finally, Tongue Twisters and Vocal Warm-Ups will also benefit singers.

All of the tongue twisters and vocal warm-ups in this book, except where indicated, were written by me. Many of my YouTube favorites are included, along with many new and challenging creations. Also included is a section on how to enhance your voiceover career, because if you have the confidence and discipline to practice tongue twisters, then you have the tools to pursue success in the voiceover world.

Keep this book with you at all times and have fun as you improve your skills and elevate your voice career. Tongue Twisters and Vocal Warm-Ups gives you everything you need to perform at your highest peak every time you step up to the mic.

Ready? Let’s get started!

Section 1

Tongue Twisters

CHAPTER 1

The Value of Tongue Twisters

TONGUE TWISTERS ARE A GROUP OF WORDS THAT ARE designed for practicing pronunciation and to gain fluency in whatever you are about to do vocally. It should also be noted that my tongue twisters are neither grammatically correct nor necessarily meaningful. They are simply tools to get you warmed up before speaking or singing.

Experts agree that tongue twisters: 1) stimulate memory, focus and concentration; 2) improve your listening perception and comprehension; 3) increase your speech speed; 4) help you speak with precision and no mistakes; and 5) entertain both children and adults while learning.

A tongue twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly. Consider:

Forget Peter Piper and his Peck of Pickled Pepper—psychologists have come up with what may be the world’s most frustrating tongue twister. It may not make much sense, but the phrase ‘pad kid poured curd pulled cold’ completely defeated volunteers taking part in a U.S. speech study. Asked to repeat the phrase 10 times at a fast lick, many of the participants clammed up and stopped talking altogether, according to lead researcher Dr. Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston…. The tongue twister study, presented at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Francisco, was conducted to shed light on the brain’s speech-planning processes.

—Can YOU Say ‘Pad Kid Poured Curd Pulled Cold’? The Daily Mail [UK], December 4, 2013

I absolutely dare you to say this well-known twister five times fast and clearly:

Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat, toy boat, toy boat.

USE YOUR HANDS

I use my hands quite often when I do voiceovers. It’s all a part of my music within every word that I speak. My hands denote rhythm. My hands denote melody. I am a conductor and I am conducting my symphony of words. My voice is my instrument and I am in control of it. My hand movements are in conjunction with the words that I speak, first in my tongue twister warm-up and it continues when I read the copy.

Every piece of copy is different and it requires a different beat in your voice. Tongue twisters differ in beat and can prepare you for your next session or audition.

Here are seven reasons why tongue twisters and vocal warm-ups are so important to voiceover artists:

1.   Concentration. You cannot read a tongue twister and be successful in comprehending it and speaking it correctly without concentrating. This effort before you read voiceover or speech copy gets you in the mold and mood for concentrating on your prepared text.

2.   Articulation. Tongue twisters help you articulate long sentences without stumbling and they help you string together difficult sounds without slurring.

3.   Enunciation. Tongue twisters help you speak more clearly. They help you achieve better diction.

4.   Rhythm. It takes a good sense of rhythm to read voiceover copy. Tongue twisters are almost exclusively rhythmic.

5.   Pronunciation. Tongue twisters improve your pronunciation of words, which is paramount for voiceover.

6.   Mouth Muscles. Tongue twisters strengthen the muscles necessary for proper speech. The exaggerated way that you have to move your lips, jaws, and tongue while reading a tongue twister is very helpful for reading tough copy.

7.   Eye-Word-Mouth. Tongue twisters get you in the habit of using what I call the Eye-Word-Mouth method. Let’s break it down. Eye, first you see it. Word, you see and internalize the words. Mouth, you let the words come out of your mouth without stumbling.

Since the beginning of time, humans have been faced with the need to exert a certain amount of energy to live from day to day. The earliest inhabitants had to hunt for food with weapons far less powerful than what we have today. As technology continues to make present-day conditions easier for all of us, the one thing that remains constant is the need to practice to become better at what you do.

If you start a voiceover session that is obviously going to require shouting and long hours, you have to warm-up properly. If you are going to read fast tags and wordy legal disclaimers, you need to read tongue twisters that embody the types of words and language that you are about to read.

Do you have a promo session or audition coming up? Practice the promo tongue twisters. Want to warm up for a narration audition or job? Do a long-form spoken word tongue twister. How about a trailer vocal warm-up?

Practice, practice, practice and more practice is the way to success.

TONGUE TWISTERS PROMOTE CONCENTRATION

When it comes to voiceover, tongue twisters are very important. Not just because they challenge you but also because they require your undivided attention at all times to comprehend what it takes to deliver them properly; which is the same thing that is required when you read voiceover copy.

When I coach students, I always start the session off with a number of reasonably difficult tongue twisters. These tongue twisters take a better-than-average ability to execute. By doing these twisters first, before we start to read copy, the student enters a mode of concentration that translates inevitably to the copy.

IT’S NOT ALWAYS A MATTER OF